Archive for April, 2012|Monthly archive page

I a Jewish, but I do not lead an observant religious life. I though practice, teach and live a very spiritual life. Many would define me as a “yogi,” but I could, just as easily, be called a “person who learnt how to know her-self, so now she does know how to avoid altering her equilibrium to cause the minimum suffering.” Yes, I have learnt this through yoga, not religion. And I am not ashamed to say so even if I consider myself a Jew 100%.
My religious belief have not lead me to the same self-understanding I gained through asana, breathing and meditation practice and through limiting myself in what I could eat, drink and think for a while. I discovered the “I” beneath my own skin feeling for it through my own body and overstepping the “mind games” I had played for many years before. No religious book tell you how to conquer the “monkey mind,” they may suggest you live with certain values and respect for each other, but they do not spell out for you that if you use breath retainment and you do lots of back-bending, your heart rate will decrease and you will feel less
stressed…so,here you have it:

Yoga is yoga and religion is religion.
Two, very spiritual practices, but not the same thing!

My “yogic life” showed me the way to the “most real self I could find below the five senses,” but this does not mean I stopped being attached to my Judaism roots, the same ones my ancestors lived by over 2,000 years ago. I lead an ordinary life where the secular values I respect within the realms of my yoga reality are the same ones I have always known when raised as an Italian Jew in Rome.

Yet, I do realize for many who have not gotten through a similar “path of self-awarness” trying to define yoga without the world creed, religion, belief or spirituality is not so easy. As an example, the other day after a yoga class, I overheard one of my student saying he does yoga only for the physical benefit and he did not like to chant the “OM” before and at the end of class because he does not want to be converted to the “yoga faith.”

Now, according to my teacher Sri Dharma Mittra: “Yoga is a discipline of self-knowledge” that has nothing to do with religion. It has rules and regulations that one should respect for a better understanding of him/herself, but there is no “yoga bible,” there is not yogi as followers of a particular religious creed, but just yogi as followers of a teacher who will show them what he did to understand himself best and encourage them to do the same. Being called a Yogi is simply the definition of those who have “reached the yoking of their minds and bodies,” those who have paid their dues understanding that these two entities work on their own and that the whole goal of life is to make them work in accordance with one another to avoid pain and suffering.

Religion is belonging to a tribe, a group of people with similar beliefs, Yoga is a selfish, individualists search for the meaning of our own self on this Earth. Yoga is a combination of physical exercise with breath, meditation and respect of the ethical rules *(which if you read them properly could remind you of what your parents told you when you were little, or what you would hear your grandmother yelling at you when you were playing with your friends in the backyard!). There is not religion that requires you to twist and turn like a gummy bear,neither to breath through your nose after holding the breath for 12 counts for physical benefits!

Some could argue that yoga practice can become very spiritual and lose some of its “exercise-only” traits especially when one speaks of Kirtan and chanting to the images of “personified god and goddess.” Yet again, Krishna, Ganesh and company are nothing, but the personification of a “stronger force” called “the Divine Self,” or “our own pure essence” that co-exist within ourselves unrelated to the religious back-ground we may have.

You know that feeling you get at the end of a yoga class as if you just drank a big glass of wine on an empty stomach?
you know that wonderful feeling of needing and wanting nothing more than just be on your mat just one more second in shavasana because life is just so much sweeter that way?

You also know that feeling of walking out the yoga room and being assaulted by phone calls, assignments, contracts, people talking…the world just wants to get back in touch with you, but you are all about avoiding contact. All you want to do is to shut them all up and walk home in silence where you can continue that same mantra.

Well, that feeling can and will stay with you forever if you choose to.
Yoga is the stage of needing nothing. So, once you do Yoga enough, you will realize that nothing more than that feeling is exactly what you need in life to move forward and achieve just about anything you put your mind forth.

Use Yoga as your measuring cup for what you think you need and what instead you are going to obtain if you have no expectations of what life will bring.
There is nothing more you will need than the fulfillment of pushing yourself toward the limit of a pose and getting there after hours of exercise. Kicking up into that forearm balance after many tries will serve you more than earning a big chunk of cash for a photography gig. Self-satisfaction goes beyond money and fame. Yoga teaches you just that and then fun side of it is that you can take if off your mat any time you want. And even play with it on a lonesome pear in the middle of Williamsburg in a cold night in December.